ATI vs Nvidia: who makes the best graphics cards? ( A good read )

Mac vs PC. Microsoft vs Google. Intel vs AMD. There's no shortage of monumental rivalries in the tech industry. But the royal rumble between ATI and Nvidia for dominance of 3D graphics is one of the roughest of the lot.

You could argue the contest is really between AMD and Nvidia. After all, AMD snapped up Canadian graphics outfit ATI back in 2006. For now, however, the ATI brand lives on as AMD's graphics division.

More importantly, however you slice it the histories of ATI and Nvidia have been very closely intertwined. Both started out as specialists in PC graphics and have since branched out into non-PC platforms such as games consoles, mobile devices and set-top boxes.

More recently, ATI's acquisition by AMD seems to have set it on a very different path for the future from Nvidia. But let's start by reminiscing on a few of our favourite ATI vs Nvidia fisticuffs from yesteryear before taking a look at their current offerings.

RIVA and Rage

The early days of graphics on the PC saw 3D cards like Nvidia's RIVA 128 and TNT2 take on ATI's Rage and Rage 128. But it was Nvidia who presaged the modern GPU or Graphics Processing Unit with the mighty GeForce 256 in 1999. It was the first graphics chip with hardware transform and lighting capabilities. And it was fast. Damned fast.

ATI responded in 2000 with the Radeon graphics card. Ever since, successive generations of GeForce and Radeon GPUs have been leapfrogging each other in the race for graphics supremacy. Nvidia had the early advantage with the GeForce, GeForce 2, GeForce 3 and GeForce 4 series arguably having the edge over ATI's Radeon, Radeon 7500 and Radeon 8500.

But in 2002 ATI turned the tables with the awesome Radeon 9700 Pro. The first GPU with fully programmable shaders, the 9700 Pro was massively more powerful than any graphics chip before. It took until early 2003 for Nvidia to respond with the ill-fated GeForce 5800 Ultra, a GPU that never lived up to expectations.

Nvidia was back on form a year later with the GeForce 6800 series. A for tat ensued with neither ATI nor Nvidia achieving a clear advantage. It was during this period that Nvidia introduced its revolutionary multi-GPU SLI technology and ATI responded with the copycat Crossfire platform. There really was nothing to separate them.

Radeon rethink

At least, there wasn't until ATI released the underperforming Radeon HD 2900 XT. Like Nvidia's calamitous GeForce FX series, the 2900 arrived late, ran hot, underperformed and couldn't match its opposition, the GeForce 8800 Ultra.

But unlike the GeForce FX, it lead to a fundamental strategic rethink. AMD decided that in future ATI would no longer chase ultimate performance with its top GPU. Instead it would aim for maximum bang for buck and introduce dual-GPU boards to cater for enthusiasts demanding ultra-high performance.

The culmination of this rethink was the Radeon HD 4870. Launched in mid 2008, it was half the price of Nvidia's competing GeForce GTX 280 but delivered at least 80 per cent of the performance. It was a winning combination.

The DX11 era

Of course, graphics technology waits for no man and much has changed since the Radeon HD 4000 series and GeForce GTX 200 hit the market in 2008. Late last year ATI unleashed the Radeon HD 5000 series, the world's first family of graphics chips with support for the latest DirectX 11 multimedia API from Microsoft, as seen in Windows 7 but also available as an update for Windows Vista.

It took a little longer for Nvidia A to respond in kind with the GeForce GTX 400 family. It eventually turned up earlier this year and since then its been these two pixel pumping graphics architectures fighting it out for top DX11 honours.

Topping the current single-GPU tables, therefore, are the ATI Radeon HD 5870 and Nvidia Geforce GTX 480. Thanks to ATI's greater emphasis on value, the GTX 480 weighs in around £100 more expensive at £430 or so.

For the money Nvidia gives you an extra billion transistors for a faintly ridiculous total of three billion. You also get a little more memory as standard, 1.5GB to the 5870's 1GB. However, it's worth noting that 2GB variants of the 5870 are now available for less than the 1.5GB GTX 480.

Anyway, what you don't get from the 480 is a huge performance advantage. Yes it's a little quicker than the 5870. But not nearly as much as it needs to be given the extra cost and complexity.

Cut-down cards

It's a similar story further at the next rung down the graphics ladder. Both ATI and Nvidia offer slightly cut down versions of their top GPUs. The Radeon HD 5850 is yours for £225 and retains 1,440 of the 5870's 1,600 stream shaders. Meanwhile, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 470 weighs in around £295 and packs 448 of Nvidia's mighty CUDA cores. The GTX 480, for the record, has 480 cores.

Once again, the 470 is a little quicker than its ATI equivalent, but it's also much more expensive. From there, things get a little more complicated. ATI does a silly-money dual-GPU Radeon HD 5000 board, the 5970. In most tests of pixel pumping prowess, it's the quickest thing out there (NVIDIA has yet to wheel out a dual-GPU take on the GTX 400 series). But just occasionally its dual-GPU architecture and split-memory set up gets the better of it.

Move into mid-range territory and direct comparisons between ATI and Nvidia are currently a bit tricky. That's because Nvidia has yet to release more affordable chips based on Fermi, the new DX11 architecture that underpins the GTX 480 and 470 GPUs.

Consequently, the Radeon HD 5770 (£125), Radeon HD 5670 (£85) and Radeon HD 5570 (£72) are lording it without any DX11 competition.

Instead, Nvidia makes do with older chipsets based on DX10 tech, such as the GeForce GTS 250 (£125) and GeForce GT 240 (£72).

Advantage Nvidia?

That said, Nvidia has recently released an even more cut-down version of the Fermi chip in the new GeForce GTX 465, on sale now from around £230. But what it really needs is some pukka mid-range DX11 chips to take the fight to AMD. And it needs them soon. Before the end of the year ATI could well release a family of second generation DX11 GPUs.

In the meantime, it's not all bad news for Nvidia. Arguably, it has an edge in at least one important DX11 feature, the hardware tessellator. Designed to spew out huge numbers of polygons and therefore give games more geometric detail and realism than ever before, the tessellator could prove to be the killer feature in DX11. Early tests suggest Nvidia's chips have more tessellation power than ATI's.

Nvidia is also way ahead of ATI when it comes to stereoscopic 3D. Nvidia's 3D Vision technology is the best way to get 3D on your PC today. It works with a large number of games and is also compatible with certain formats of 3D movies including Blu-ray 3D. But like most other 3D display technologies, wearing a pair of geeky goggles is the price of participation.

Read more: ATI vs Nvidia: who makes the best graphics cards? | News | TechRadar UK

 

My graphics card history is with Nvidia. My parents desktop had a FX5200 which was okay, but of course was not as good as it should have been. I now have a 8400GT with my first one needing replacement because it had the lines heat and material fault. So I have only ever owned Nvidia and I will most definetly be looking for ATI in my next machine whatever it may be.

 

I well-up in the eyes everytime I recall my TNT2, that little baby packed a punch for quite a while. From there I moved onto the 9800XT, while years later my clevo sports a 260M. As I write this I stand prepared to replace that 9800XT with a 6600GT.

I think one very important point to touch on is driver support. In my history of both companies, I have found Nvidia's detonator series, coolbits, and driver support in general to be top tier taking their already good cards the next mile. Meanwhile ATI's supposedly "superior" cards are gimped by their crudware Catalyst series which have only ever served to frustrate and disappoint me. I think this will now more than ever become apparent after their AMD acquire. I see NVIDIA by far as much more dedicated and potent in their field.

 

Driver support, specially for desktop cards, is not nearly as bad. I have used both ATi and Nvidia for several years and I always found the superior drivers a joke. In laptops, however, the driver superiority belongs to nvidia, but that does not mean much to me as they tend to release oh so many drivers, when the real good ones are several revisions ahead.

The Radeon vs GeForce is a bit more detailed but you did a good job sumarizing it. Each gen was a heated fight, with special cards like the 9500 pro, 6600GT, X1900 series, G.F8800 series etc. Not always the top of the line, but a single card that had great value and performance.

 

While most of the article summarized the history, both company's current directions are so different it almost makes the past irrelevant. Simply put, the article just says that ATI is pursuing the more economical price/performance ratios in it's lineups, while NV is pursuing what they perceive as the future. I think that the whole 3D craze is ridiculous, and the need for goggles is almost insulting. 3D won't take off in the mainstream or even in the high-end gaming sectors until you don't need goggles to view 3D content, there I said it.

Anthony has a point, they left out driver support which is perhaps the most important factor in their history. NV still has a lead in this dept., but either ATI is closing the gap quickly (they hired/stole one of NV's lead programmers) or NV is getting lazy - recent releases from BOTH companies have been less than stellar.

Also;

INB4ziddy
you know what i mean !

 

I couldn't agree with you more -- on both occasions. nVidia driver support is hands down far-and-away better than what ATI/AMD offer ( I have a desktop w/ 5870). Their appears to be a bit of lag in the ATI dept. when it comes to continued support and that is why i choose nVidia.

lower prices =/= longevity and price value

 

My vote right now is with ATi. They currently offer excellent value for performance as compared to nVidia. It's still a very close fight though.

But, now think about the mobile market (seeming as this is a laptop forum). ATi is currently leading, massively, in the enthusiast notebook market. 5870s use less power, offer far more performance, generate less heat, and cost less than nVidia's 280/285Ms. Even the latest 480M doesn't quite match up; it offers very little performance increase over the 5870 (in the latest benchmarks, anyway) while using massively more power, producing a lot more heat, and being a lot more expensive.

The 480M really is a card that needs one thing to save it right now; a company determined enough to try and put to of them in an SLi machine. And at a 100W TDP, that's a damned hard task. Then, and only then, will nVidia manage to so much as even match up to ATi in performance in the mobile market. And even then, that will come with a massive extra power consumption and a lot more cost and heat.

 

I like ATI because the price is more fair and more bang for buck usually. I like Nvidia too if there are good deals to be had as well. I will probably go Nvidia for my next desktop build. I never had a problem with either brand as far as graphics cards however.

 

My first laptop has been my dv5t with a 9600M GT which was a big step over the pentium 4 desktops which i had to use as cheap options for 3-4 years but seriously , it looks crap now..

i'm the type of person who likes the most expensive and best stuff but in this case, I choose ATI... NVDIA is just too hot and extra price ain't worth it.

 

Lets see first dedicated GPU 8400m G(YAAAH!!!)
Then a HD 3850
Replaced the 8400m G with a HD 3200(Dedicated to integrated FTW!!!!)
Then bought a 9400GT
Replaced the 3850 with a 5750
Currently saving for a 7770

 

I had a 8400 GS in my old desktop. Decent card.
Now I have a 5850M in my laptop. Also a decent card.

Both companies are good companies and I don't really have too much of a preference. Though before when I bought my desktop I though Nvidia was the best brand ever.

 

i disagree. i have a 5770 in my desktop and the driver support has been superb for me. i've gone up more than 750 points in vantage since last november with just driver upgrades.

the issues that i've seen on an overclocking forum that i belong to seem to have been addressed and resolved with more recent drivers.

the power requirements and price of the 'extreme' high end desktop components were not worth it for me. nvidia doesn't seem to offer decent mid-ranged components anymore. low price may not equal value, however, low price + good performance does. there is no need to spend $200+ for a card with +10-20% more performance unless you enjoy having the top high-dollar components regardless of the cost. nvidia's 400 series was a major let down in my opinion.

 

in fact nowadays , NVDIA driver support becomes crappier and crappier.. ATI is actually 100 times better now and 5870 gets stronger and stronger update on update.

 

Don´t know where you come from, but the unofficial Nvidia driver support i.e beta drivers is not crappy at all. Sure the mobile driver support is pretty crappy but who uses mobile drivers these days? I have always used desktop drivers for my laptop.

 

It's hard to say which company is better. The focus for either one is somewhat different. For pure graphics, I'd go with ATi, because they have proven to be better at designing hardware for purely graphics. Their performance/transistor ratio is phenomenally better than Nvidia's and their price/performance ratio is as good if not a bit better. However, Nvidia is hugely focused on making the GPUs able to do more than just graphics. While ATi has been pushy about GPGPU, especially with OpenCL and DX11's Direct Compute capabilities, it's rather unused at this moment, and Nvidia's Fermi supports it as well. Nvidia's proprietary CUDA tech has been adopted to a much further extent and there are a handful of very good high profile titles with PhysX support (even it really doesn't make a difference in gameplay).

Being AMD, ATi has been very focused on making excellent graphics processors while keeping GPGPU and other "icing on the cake features" second to that process. Nvidia on the other hand seems to be focused on everything at the moment, with the graphics card industry "threatened" by consoles. They want a hand in other computing sectors that respond well to GPU architecture being used for GPGPU work. Since ATi is with AMD, it can be trusted that AMD will handle the general computing space because they of course and x86 CPU company. However, AMD bought ATi partially to create very flexible but powerful processors, culminating in the APU. The APU is DAAMIT's big chance to hit the ground running with GPGPU, and potentially to a better position than where Nvidia is now. Especially in cheaper computers, it can put alot of general purpose computing as well as graphics in a single inexpensive chip and hopefully will change the game up with netbooks.

As far as a current leader goes, I'd go with ATi, because they are with AMD, who is right now doing very successfully across most of their divisions. While yes, they are behind Intel in many ways, they are a decently healthy company that has a good future ahead of them and making huge strides in a number of computing areas. Nvidia is a much smaller company, and a big mistake would be harder for them to absorb and recover from. While the Fermi launch has been reasonably successful for them (I don't know about sales numbers) the research costs and low processing yields probably hit them hard. Fermi is a good architecture with loads of potential, especially with lower and medium end parts that wouldn't be outputting huge amounts of heat and consuming extraneous amounts of power. Nvidia just needs to get those products out and increase their yields.

While I'm an ATi centric person right now, I like competition, we need Nvidia just like we need at least two major players in the x86 race. I've jumped around from the two GPU and the two CPU makers numerous times. I really wish Via would hit it big too but they've been screwed over so much.

 

Nope. This thread got me thinking maybe things had changed, but nope. ATI drivers are still the poor excuse for software I've ever seen. I still have detonator running on my TNT2, and even matrox provides better drivers than ATI, absolute crudware. Case in point, see attachment. I kid you not, this very day after reading this topic again, I decided to update, and got this error promptly after launching the install not more than 2 seconds in. Absolute fail drivers.

 

Sure would like to know what that was from, or maybe you're just running DX11-class hardware on an outdated OS.

While I do think Nvidia's drivers are generally superior to ATI's, it's nowhere near being a night-and-day difference. I run ATI in all of my machines and honestly, the only major driver issue I've dealt with on my 5870 has been poor playback in Premiere CS5, an issue that was fixed in a recent release despite getting very little press on any end.

I'm also willing to state that in my experience, Nvidia's hardware is more reliable. But once XFX started selling Radeons, that became substantially less of an issue and less of a gamble. I had a rash of bad Radeon HD 4870s, and my buddy's 4850 needed an aftermarket cooler to remain operational, but my 5870 again is fantastic, the 4670 in my media center has served me very well, and the rash of All-in-Wonder Radeons I had early in my career were all surprisingly reliable cards with few driver issues...few issues at all, really. (Still miss the 8500DV, loved that release.)

At the same time, I loved the GeForce 7600 GT, 7950 GT, and GeForce Go 7600 I had. The 8800 GTS 640 was fantastic, but Nvidia's drivers in the early Vista era were absolutely dismal: believe it. I wound up ditching the 8800 for a pair of Crossfired 3850s that worked out wonderfully.

What keeps me going back to ATI is a matter of principle at this point: ATI hasn't deliberately screwed customers in a long time, but Nvidia has an ugly corporate culture. I've dealt with a couple of really nice guys over there, but some of their reps are nasty, and their history of blackballing sites that produce unfavorable reviews is deplorable. The Intel's Insides site is offensive in its lack of maturity. Deliberately disabling PhysX on any system with a Radeon in it and then lying about why they had to do it is bad enough, but recent evidence that CPU-based PhysX is more or less deliberately crippled is even more damning. This is not a company I want to support, and thankfully, ATI's done such a good job of cleaning up their rough spots in recent years that I don't have to.

 

That tessalator is going to hurt in the mid range.

Since ATI's is in the uncore, a region common to all 5x00 series chips (except the 5450 possibly) they all do it as well (or badly) as each other.

Nvidia on the other hand cut down theirs for the mid range chips.

 

At the moment, ATi, and with the way Nvidia is going, it looks like it will stay that way for a while.

 

Get a load of this, after hunting around for a bit, I found the problem was somewhat common. The solution? Manually go into the registry, tweak some keys, then reflect the changes in the file path for files that have absolutely nothing to do with the drivers (but probably some defaults they forgot to clear before shipping their cookie-cutter install software). Why am I not surprised? Utter sloppiness and disregard. But then again, I've already come to expect the worse from ATI. From day 1, their Catalyst suite was clunky, ugly, took 5 minutes to load if the CLI is not started, has blatant discrepancies in settings across pages that refuse to take, is bloated, tries to sneak Folding@Home and WoW trials in without telling you, never installs without headache, runs worse, and ultimately introduces more regressions every update than a chart of a stock portfolio on Black Tuesday.

 

The drivers are designed to install on top of each other.

Lol at your rant @nthony.

Because Nvidia drivers have no problems at all..... oh wait.

 

Gotta agree the same, both companies have thier issues, currently ATI is in the lead, with drivers that are becoming more dependable, whilst Nvidia drivers have been running into more issues for a while now, and certainly don't seem to be the 'gold standard' they used to be.

Take a look at the vista Nvidia driver issues, or perhaps the issues with DPC latency recently with laptop platforms and you'll see what I mean, ATI has at least upped it's game in this regards, producing monthly notebook drivers now.

Either way both sides have things to improve; and thats coming from someone with experience and owning cards from both sides.

 

No they're not, ATI even has it's own uninstall utility they instruct users to use before installing another driver. But as I explained the issue was unrelated to drivers at all, and a result of their incompetency in rolling out the most basics of setup utilities (really all it has to do is get the driver on my machine, is that so hard?). It reminds me of the time I installed an EA update (another shining example in their industry) that left keys all over my registry labeled "My Company Name".
I'm not saying Nvidia is perfect, I'm saying I've never experienced such sheer incompetency, such effortless stupidity as I've witnessed with ATI. Take it as it is, just one man's rant wondering why if it happens all the time, how can it be merely coincidence.

 

My experience with ATI drivers is pretty similar: most of the time, it is about the same as with Nvidia, but when ATI fails, it fails in an absurdly spectacular way. I bought a Radeon 4550 for a media PC a while back and unless I manually tweak the voltages for 2D performance on the card, it randomly freezes while watching video. I could understand if a video card had problems with a particular game, but with Windows Media Player and Youtube? Seriously?

That said, ATI's hardware has been generally better than Nvidia's for quite some time in terms of both performance per dollar and performance per watt. If they could just sort out the driver issues, they'd be the logical choice for everyone who is not using CUDA.

 

My first purchased nvidia card was a FX5200!! =) In my desktop I built like 8-9 years ago or something. sweeet hahaha before that I don't remember what I had in the desktop my parents bought us kids. It played SC1 and Half-Life1 decently so.. shrugs lol I'm indifferent on ATI vs nvidia. I like nvidia's drivers, they're updated more and laptop modded which is nice. I had an ATI 3670 before and it was pretty good though. ATI is making a good push in notebooks for lower heat etc. More recently what brought my faith back into nvidia was the 335m. good card, 72 cores, fits into smaller systems and fast =) also had a 260m before.. so yeah more track record with nvidia.

 

I'd appreciate it if you could just not outright lie. Your thread is from 2007, there have been more than 24 updates to Catalyst since then. Current Catalyst drivers don't "sneak" anything in. Run the custom, there's a checkbox you can disable customer feedback and the Lord of the Rings demo.

Now granted this is anecdotal, but I've installed a boatload of ATI drivers over the past few days (having built three computers and reformatted two more) and haven't had the skullcrushing, utterly dealbreaking issues you've had...much less any issues at all.

But what do I know? It's not like review sites send me hardware for a living to take a look at and give feedback on for consumers.

Oh wait...

 

Well said haha. I always found those complaining of ATi drivers to such extent quite funny. I have used both ATi and nVidia, built several desktops and used several laptops with both GPU makers and never had a real deal breaking issue with any of them.

Oh well. All I know is that my next laptop will have a high end ATi GPU. Time to get back to them after using nVidia for a while.

 

Why is the thread date important, it applies now, right now. Driver quality doesn't just apply to just front-running models, because (unlike your situation), the majority do not receive new hardware every month and thus experience the ugly side of ATI and their drivers. So what value is your word, if it only comes from the best of ATI?

They may not push Folding@Home anymore, but my post was a culmination of 7 years of experience. To this day, their drivers remain clunky (no thanks I don't feel like having 4 processes running just to load the Control Center before tomorrow). To this day, their drivers remain flaky (settings revert by themselves, and need to be applied 3-4 times before taking). And of course, you whose knowledge is limited to only the latest and greatest, doesn't experience things like black textures on games that ATI no longer cares about, like BF2, or ridiculous framerate drops for old games like Half-Life (it is unforgivably pathetic that since Cat8.0 my FPS in HL dips below 15. pathetic).

I've deal with front-running and legacy NVIDIA drivers, and their legacy support has been stellar (I cannot praise the Detonator series enough), so what does it say about ATI that only their latest drivers do not (according to you) suck? The true measure of driver quality isn't in making your new hardware shine - that's expected - it's in keeping it shining 3-5 years down the road.

 

Uh, don't know if you actually have a 3-5 year old card or not, but I do. NV stopped support for the 7600 about 2-3 years ago - the only reason I can play "modern games" (anything made in the last 2 years) is because I'm using modified/hacked/thirdpartied 197.x drivers; the last official drivers for the 7xxx series were 176/179 beta. NV's official legacy support is just as bad as ATI's; it's the nv fanbase that keeps legacy cards alive and kicking.

The real major difference between the two is that ATI's initial drivers for a series (say the 5xxx) are generally pretty stable and do not improve much over time, their final 5xxx release may only be 20% better than the initial release. NV releases extremely unoptimized drivers for the initial card release which improve drastically by the time the card support is dropped. As far as having problems with either, there usually isn't one - but if there is a problem with an ATI driver, NV has it's own problem in another way.

 

Personally back in the day i wouldn't have even thought ati or nvidia, just 3dFx n Voodoo ,

I have two Nvidia 5200 fx in operation after 7-10 and they weren't bad cards, very stable to say the least. still working flawlessly.

My next nvidia chip i had was the 7600 Go in a sony vaio, another very stable chip with some nice performance behind it, didn't let me down for a very, very long time.

The next chip after that is the 8600m gt in my paps samsung, while running at seriously horrid temperatures, its been working the last 2-3 years without any problem and the performance has suprised me, i would have settled for the 8600m for a mainstream machine.

Now after that came the ATI love , 4850 in my Advent 6555 just ran down games because its coupled with a lower native res then the norm for 17" machines and still performs today without any problems at all (Although no DX11) support, performance is still brutal because of the low res .

Only problem though, after having all the nvidia cards, my browsing experience and animation etc, was alot smoother then my ATI? maybe clock problems or just the 2d hardware, but nvidia definately had me in that area .

 

Ive heard recently after Toms hardware ran an article on the poor 2d performance and has stats to back it up, that ATI put some particular focus on it and its completely fixed in 10.6 if I do recall correctly.

 

well I have to say when it comes to drivers no one can touch Matrox, but alas we dont see them in laptops OR gaing cards anymore.
( I still have a couple G400 and Millennium cards in operation )

but the last year or so I have to agree ATI has picked up its socks and exceeded Nvidia in the driver arena as well. I am tired of having to tweak and change drivers for Nvid to work right at all. but I will also say I am fond of doing a cutome catylist install and leaving all the crap off my machines as well.

 

You take an awful lot for granted in responding to me.

I've also had to maintain more than my share of systems, keep old kit going for a while, etc.

Also, the thread date is important because you're talking about a problem with technology that occurred in 2007. That's three generations of hardware ago, to give you a measure of time. If you want me to believe you, how about citing some modern forum posts?

Of course, if you did that I might have to throw some modern posts about Nvidia's drivers back at you.

But if you DO want to cite 2007, I'll be happy to drag up the driver hell that was Nvidia hardware in that era.

 

Do me a favour. Hit up this link, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and tell me what you see under the heading "Release Date". Now go back and edit your post.

Don't you get it? That forum post being old is a testament to the enduring crappiness of ATI software. It means since that date until today, they still haven't fixed the issue, despite 3 years passing, despite it probably being reported to them several times, they still haven't fixed it. Utter failware.

 

Then show me a forum listing that problem with an actual recent timestamp. You're linking between two different things without actually bridging them at all.

You might as well say "Resident Evil: Extinction came out in September 2007, and to this day ATI legacy drivers still suck!"

 

I have owned a ATI radion 9200, ATI X1950 PRO, NV 295. All my friends have ATI 5850s.

My experience with ATI was mediocre, the 9200 overclocked like a champ, but the X1950 PRO was terrible, albeit very fast. The drivers are clunky, and the "catalyst AI" wastes cpu, unless you disable it, which doesn't always work.
My friends 5850s all have driver issues where the driver would let the GPU change power states and cause the cursor to become 6 times it's normal size.

Desktop drivers for 295 have been fine, no issues what so ever, despite it being a dual gpu card.

I have used nvidia drivers in 4 notebooks, (Go 7600, Go 7950 GTX, 280M, 335M). The nvidia drivers released by the Notebook Manufacturer totally differ in quality and performance, depending on who releases them. Sony have RUBBISH driver support, and you have to use hacks to get the latest drivers. Dell have far better, but less than great support, at least they now have 64 bit.

My point is that in my experience, Nvidia's desktop drivers win hands down over ATI, simply because I can't find fault with them. When it comes to notebooks however, it mostly comes down to the notebook manufacturer's custom graphics driver, and how well it is developed.

 

I'd say currently the advantage is to ATI(In desktop gpu's). Their cards are much more power efficient, and provide for performance per $ imo. As for Notebooks Nvidia's Optimus provides a strong advantage in the switchable graphics department

 

This depends on the price point. The GF100 cards are noisy, hot and expensive, but at $200, the GF104-based GTX 460 is pretty good at performance both per dollar and per watt.

 

At least ATI hasn't made drivers that burned it's customer's GPU, then saying a simple sorry on their site, without any refunds. I wonder why nobody has mentioned anything about that.

 

Damn zombies keep munching on ATi coders brains, drivers are suffering!